Okay, maybe the most crucial missing element in US media coverage of climate change is an actual understanding of the dire nature of the issue or maybe the still unjustifiable “balance” whereby the other “side” is treated as serious sources, rather than as long-wrong disinformers or maybe how they are blowing the economics issue (see Must-read (again) study: How the press bungles its coverage of climate economics “” “The media’s decision to play the stenographer role helped opponents of climate action stifle progress” and countless examples here).  Still, Donald A. Brown, Associate Professor of Environmental Ethics, Science, and Law at Penn State University has a case to make — and his excellent blog ClimateEthics (a Time magazine Top 15 pick) is the source of this guest post.

I. Introduction: Scottish Versus The US Climate Change Debate
In March, the U.S. State Department asked me to speak to the Scottish Parliament about climate-change policies as they were debating a new climate-change law.

Before I spoke, a Scottish Parliamentarian made an argument that I have never heard any US politician make. The topic of this speech is also curiously largely absent in US media climate change coverage.  The Parliamentarian argued that Scotland should adopt this tough new legislation even though it might be expensive because the Scotts had an obligation to the rest of the world to do so. In other words, those countries most responsible for causing climate change have ethical duties to reduce their emissions even if it costs are significant.  That is, high-emitting developed countries like the United States must reduce their greenhouse gas emissions as a matter of justice.

In late June, Scotland passed the landmark climate change law that was being debated during my March visit, a law that requires a 42% cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, rising to 80% by 2050. (BBC, 2009) On the day the law passed, Scottish Finance Secretary John Swinney told the Parliamentarians that passing the world-leading legislation was justified because the climate change affects all the people on of our planet and the Scots had a duty to make the commitments in the law. (TWFY 2009)

The US Congress is striving to pass legislation that would for the first time create binding greenhouse gas emissions reductions 12 years after most of the rest of the developed world bound themselves to reduce emissions in the Kyoto Protocol. Yet, there is not the faintest murmur in the US climate-change debate or in the media’s coverage of the unfolding US legislative fight about duties and responsibilities that the United States has to the rest of the world to reduce the threat of climate change. This is so even though the legislation that has passed the House would require 17% reductions by 2020, a commitment that is only 40% of the Scottish requirement.

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Europe made a major commitment under the Kyoto protocol that U.S. conservatives have been telling us for years they would never achieve. It now seems clear they will meet their commitment under the terms of the protocol. It will become increasingly difficult for those who don’t want a U.S. cap-and-trade system to point to the European Trading System (ETS) as an obvious failure — as discussed in this June CP post. CAP’s Austin Davis has some lessons learned for U.S. legislation.

This week the German Marshall Fund of the United States released a useful new analysis of the European Union Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) designed to offer powerful and positive recommendations to U.S. policymakers as they debate the design of a potential cap-and-trade program.

The paper’s authors hail from a wide range of prestigious academic and the clean energy backgrounds: Michael Grubb, chief economist of the UK’s Carbon Trust and chair of Climate Strategies; Thomas L. Brewer, research director of Climate Strategies; Misato Sato of the London School of Economics; Robert Heilmayr of the World Resources Institute; and Dora Fazekas of Climate Strategies. Their premise for the report is straightforward:  While American opinion makers and policy makers vaguely know that Europe has a cap-and-trade system in effect, the lessons we can learn from it and its real and substantive benefits are too often ignored in our public debate. This report aims to fix that.

And the reason Americans should know more about the EU ETS is because it’s working. Since 2005, Europe’s cap-and-trade system has established a carbon market worth ‚¬40 billion (US$56.6 billion) annually and, despite initial stumbling blocks, has reduced emissions by 50-100 million metric tons of CO2 per year (or by around 2.5-5%). Simultaneously, European businesses benefit from Europe’s transition to a carbon-free economy since “the EU ETS has increased overall profitability in all participating sectors” while supporting a sizeable boom in clean energy jobs in spite of the global recession.

However, Europe’s multifaceted successes required Europeans to carefully evaluate their ETS and reconfigure it on the fly – uncertainties and tribulations that American consumers business can largely avoid. The Europeans divided their cap-and-trade scheme into three phases to provide pause for analysis and reevaluation; this allowed them, for example, to halt the unfortunate practice of European utilities whereby they passed almost all of the costs of carbon onto consumers, reaping huge windfalls from the ETS’s free carbon allocations. While Waxman-Markey effectively shields consumers from these abuses “by giving power sector allowances to distribution companies, which then sell these to generators and have an obligation to use the revenues in part to support energy efficiency programs,” this kind of acumen seems rare among American policymakers and rarer still in the public debate:

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[JR:  I participated in a recent Defense Science Board study of the military's energy use -- and it became quite clear that wasteful use of energy in a war zone means more convoys of fuel trucks, perhaps the prime target for roadside bombs/attacks, which meant more American lives lost.]

US marines in Afghanistan launch first energy efficiency audit in war zone

The US Marines Corps ordered the first ever energy audit in a war zone today to try to reduce the enormous fuel costs of keeping troops on the ground in Afghanistan.

General James T Conway, the Marines Corps Commandant, said he wanted a team of energy experts in place in Afghanistan by the end of the month to find ways to cut back on the fuel bills for the 10,000 strong marine contingent.

US marines in Afghanistan run through some 800,000 gallons of fuel a day. That’s a higher burn rate than during an initial invasion, and reflects the logistical challenges of running counter-insurgency and other operations in the extreme weather conditions of Afghanistan….

He said he was looking to his energy auditors to find ways of cutting back energy consumption at operating bases, and also to pare down the equipment carried by each individual marine. An average marine carries about 9lbs of disposable batteries in their kit to power equipment such as night vision goggles and radios.

One immediate target of the auditors is likely to be climate control. Some 448,000 gallons alone are used to keep tents cool in the Afghan summer, where temperatures reach well over 40C, and warm in the winter, said Michael Boyd, an energy adviser to the Marine Corps.

The marines have been exploring ways to reduce that consumption by spraying tents with a foam coating.

“That’s a huge saving and you are no longer putting trucks on those roads, and tanker drivers in harm’s way and everyone else involved on the way,” Boyd said.

Scientists Warn Restoration-based Environmental Markets May Not Improve Ecosystem Health

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Plug-ins and electric cars are a core climate solution, since electric drives are more efficient, easily powered by carbon-free energy and indeed far cheaper to operate per mile than gasoline, even when running on renewable power. And they are the key alt-fuel strategy needed to deal with the energy/economic security threat of rising dependence on imported oil and the inevitably grim impacts of peak oil (see “Why electricity is the only alternative fuel that can lead to energy independence“).  I think the Volt was overdesigned (see “CMU study suggests GM has wildly oversized the batteries in the Chevy Volt plug-in hybrid“), but very much hope it succeeds.  Our guest blogger, Kate Tecku, Energy Policy Intern at the Center for American Progress, has the latest updates on the Vote (first posted here).  See also “So what is it like to actually drive the Chevy Volt plug in hybrid electric car?“).

On Tuesday, after weeks of buzz from a viral media blitz, GM finally answered its own marketing spin, “What is 230?” Apparently, the new Chevrolet Volt – set to hit show room floors in 2010 – will achieve an astounding city fuel economy of 230 miles per gallon.

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